I have searched, but have not found the answer. My VE A/T has a strange issue. I can be driving, and all of the sudden (usually when accellerating) the RPMs will drop to just over 1000 RPMs, jump up to about 1700 or so, and jump back down very quickly for a few secods. If I floor it or let off the gas it goes back to normal. Also sometimes the car will just die when driving or idleing.

The Fuel Pump sending unit was replaced 2 days after I bought the car. When putting it back together it did not start, and I noticed the fuse connectors under the dash were too far apart to make connection (I had a wire shoved in there because the fuse kept blowing, I know its unsafe and all), so I pushed them together and it seemed to work fine.

Also when I bought the car it had no O2 sensor. I put one in and thought it had fixed the low idle problem, but that seems to be back again this morning too.

Any ideas are appreciated. Sometimes this car is full of power, and sometime it just dies

Geoff

 

old cars have problems! :P

 

Nice post flushgordon

 

Could be the mass air flow sensor is bad or needs a good cleaning..Also may be a bad coil pack or two....

You can clean the maf sensor with electrical contact cleaner...Very gently...

 

The MAF is a good place to start, but there's probably something more to a problem that dramatic.

 

sounds like the coil pack issue to me.
if you ever make it down here we can do some part swapping "diagnostics" with my spares and car

 

sounds like a pretty common "stalling/bucking" type problem that is due to faulty coil packs.

Mine had a bad rear one that caused that same thing.

 

I second the motion of coil packs. Feels just like you let off the gas, right?

 

i third it

 

search in the 3rd gen section for stalling bucking or that + coil packs

There was a huge thread about this maybe a year or so ago. Honestly, Just change out coil packs.

One word of warning, though. You might just buy one each (front and rear) then swap them in and take the car out and see if it causes it. On mine, they all looked good and seemed fine at idle. It is when you put a heavy load on them that they crap out. Mine would do it a lot under WOT and accelerating on hills.

 

Coil Packs it was I swapped them all out from ones from the 93 VE Parts car. Worked like a charm. I broke the MAF while trying to get it out, so I added another one of those too. Runs like a charm. None of the coilpacks seem cracked, is there an easy way to test them? I know not all 6 are bad.

 

The only way I know is to put them in one at a time until the problem resurfaces. I couldn't tell on mine with a ohmeter. They don't seem to fail until they are stressed.